Counting your face among the living
by saint-self-destruction
Summary: Emily is alone and wounded when she is carried of by a redneck with a crossbow. Daryl Dixon/OC
1. Introduction

I remember. I remember the thundering screams crashing through my skull. I remember the crying children, too young to understand what was happening, abandoned by their mothers as the world fled the decaying corpses slowly awakening from their supposedly eternal slumber. It was only a few minutes until the military arrived but by that time the city, for the most part at least, had been devoured by the walking dead. the few people that were left, hiding in the corners or barricaded in the houses were shot down by the armed men and women who stormed the streets below the woodland aria I looked down from.  
It was a small town that housed no more than a thousand men, women and children. A poor town nobody had even bothered to name, forgotten by the rest of the world, written completely off the map. But it was my town. My ugly, sweaty, dirty town and no one loved it more than I did, more than I still do. I loved the stream that ran through the entire length of the settlement, I loved the woods that were almost entirely mine, only shared with the other very few people willing to enter the supposedly haunted forest. I lived there in the trees like a wild animal, an urban legened to the townsfolk and I wouldn't of changed it for the world.  
I had never spoken to the people who lived in that town and had no desire to either.

I had spent the first 15 years of my life living in one of the broken down hovels they call an apartment with my alcoholic father, he never gave me that much trouble seeing as most of his time was spent sleeping in gutters after being thrown out of pubs, when he was home I did all I could to avoid him but sometimes it was just impossible. He was violent when he was drunk but luckily for him the school never did care about pupil well fare and payed no attention to the bruises and cuts across my face.  
When I was 15 I had had enough and after taking my last beating from the man I was supposed to love, I packed a few necessities and fled to the forest where I would spend my days in a tree house I had constructed shortly before.


	2. Dead man's float

Emily's long hair blew slowly with the breeze as she stood upon the branch of an old oak tree. The water below the cliff gave no sign of the disaster the rest of the earth had become: not a trace of blood in the river; not a single body to be seen; there were no moans issuing from the undead corpses that now roamed the forest and the last of the screams from the neighboring town finally died out as the last man was shot dead.

She looked down at her empty flask before starting down the Rocky mountain side towards the creek. Stilling herself, she listened for the tell-tale moans of the cadavers. Convinced it was safe to pass through the trees she descended slowly from the cliff's surface back onto the trail. Her eyes were heavy from lack of sleep and her head spun faintly with every step.

She knew she wouldn't last long in this new world , even before the out break she knew her destiny was to die. To be made an example of and she was okay with that. She didn't even care when or where it happened all she cared about was that she didn't die in vain, that hopefully her death would do some good and maybe that way she wouldn't be forgotten. In a world like this one though, she thought, she had a much higher chance of dying alone, ripped to shreds and eaten by rotten corpses.

she reached the water and began filling her canteen then placed it neatly on the ground against a tree with her rucksack, bow and quiver. She eased off her blood soaked jeans and slowly walked towards the water

gently, she wondered into the cool lake, closing her eyes as it soaked through her t-shirt. when the water arrived at the top of her chest she lowered herself in fully and kicked off to a swim. The girl swam calmly, checking on her belongings she had left by a tree every so often.

The sun was beginning to settle on the horizon, the water was cold and there was a sharp chill in the air. Emily was floating peacefully on her back unaware of the impending darkness slowly falling around her. suddenly she felt something cold and slimy grab at her ankle, she pulled away, panicked and saw an icy white hand clawing through the water before closing around her wrist. She let out a broken scream as the creature dug its fingers into her, almost drawing blood. It was as if it was over before it had begun as the now motionless dead body released her hand and bobbed slowly up to the top of the water, a yellow headed arrow sticking out of its skull spilling the corpse's blood into the water.


End file.
